What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family? Guest blogger Sandy Ramsey-Trayvick poses that question in today’s post. Her thought process is both convicting and empowering.

As special needs parents, many of us have advocated for our children educationally and medically to ensure the services or treatments they need to grow, heal, and thrive. 

As the mom of a son with special needs, I’ve been playing the role of advocate for over 20 years and have been pretty successful in gaining access to services my son might have otherwise not received. He, his classmates, and schoolmates have benefited because strong advocacy can affect real change. We can all attest to that.

I wonder what would happen if we advocated for ourselves as passionately as we advocate for our kids. In not doing so, how have we been deprived of the things we need to grow, heal, and thrive?

There is so much being shared about self/soul care these days.  The need for both, and ideas for how to address both, are well documented.  And yet these are still areas where special needs parents, especially moms, continue to struggle.

Why is that?  

The answer might lie in the mindset we need to adopt before we can prioritize self and soul care? Because advocacy is a response to a perceived injustice, What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family? With this perspective, would you then be more willing to advocate for your self and soul care?  Perhaps then we, as special needs parents, would be willing to:  

• Look and advocate for solutions that make self-care possible.
• Stand up against the voices that tell us we don’t need to care for our physical, spiritual and emotional health.
• Advocate against the supermom/dad syndrome that drives so many of us to have unhealthy expectations of ourselves. Advocate for the truth that both we and our families fail to thrive when we don’t care for our own well-being.

With so many other things to do, it can often seem easier than not to let our own needs slide. In my case, the Lord Himself had to reveal that my mindset about self-care needed to change. Prior to His revelation, I’d never considered that sacrificing my own care did not line up with God’s desires for me. According to His exact words, the choices I was making to neglect consistent self-care were rooted in a disabled life mindset. He wanted me to make better choices for my well-being.

That’s so like God, isn’t it?  He doesn’t want anything to prevent us from fulfilling His good plans for our lives. He’s given us His Holy Spirit, the Advocate to help us. He’s willing to help us if we want to make better choices. But He won’t force us. So ask yourself these questions:

• What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family?
• What are some of the areas in which your self and soul could use an advocate?  
• If you’re not sure, ask the LORD and His Advocate will guide you.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email.